Objectives and scope

The R3ASC'18 conference will address the latest developments in aerospace actuation since 2016, when a hundred worldwide industrialists, specialists and  scientists attended the sixth R3ASC conference.

 Actuation is sometimes considered as a minor topic in aerospace, when placed in front of aerodynamics, engines, structures and avionics. However, it is a major consumer of non-propulsive power and serves several major safety-critical functions. The last years have shown that the evolution towards safer, cheaper and greener actuation systems and components is not so straight:

- Maturation of demonstrators to put new concepts and technologies into service requires numerous changes at any phase of the product life. This concerns in particular the design process, the mass production at constant quality, the operational practices and the certification aspects.

- The experience recently acquired with in-service more electric aircraft and completed research projects provides now a more realistic perception of the challenges towards getting all electrically powered actuation.

- More conventional solutions have shown that there is still a potential of improvement to keep them attractive.

- New applications (e.g. private space flights or UAVs) and new suppliers (e.g. for more electrical actuation) are re-shaping the market of actuation in terms of needs and offered solutions.

In order to offer the delegates the widest view on recent advances in actuation systems and components, authors are invited to submit scientific or technical communications dealing with:

• Application to commercial, civil and military market: aircrafts, helicopters, launchers, unmanned aerial vehicles and weapons
• Application to flight controls, landing gears, engines
• Power generation and distribution, power management
• Hydraulically / electrically / hybrid powered actuation: PbW, HSA, EMA, EHA,…
• Signal transmission and control: FbW, FbL, FblW, FbWL, POD, PLC
• Architectures for signal/power transmission and transformation
• Multidisciplinary optimisation, robust design, multidomain and multiscale approaches
• Reliability, safety, health and usage monitoring
• Mutualisation, modularization, standardization
• Energy saving, more environment-friendly designs
• Components: direct drive valves, magnetic gears, SiC electronics, etc.
• Ground and in-flight tests, verification and validation
• Simulation, virtual prototyping, virtual test-benches
• Integration, operation, maintenance, service withdrawal